I watched Katyn only the previous night and watching another movie about something that I had barely any knowledge about made me certain that there are never enough movies around the world wars. In that way I think 9/11 and the “War Against Terrorism” are not as diverse even though there are already 9/11 literature classes being taught in some American universities.
Die Fälscher won for Austria the Academy Award in the Best Foreign Language Film of the Year category in 2007. I had high expectations for the movie, which is not good especially for movies screened at film festivals. But it turned out to be one of the most thought-provoking war movies I have ever seen.
Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch is the world’s most notorious counterfeiter. He is smart and level-headed. Even after being nabbed by the determined Sturmbannführer Friedrich Herzog he survives better than your average prisoner in a Nazi camp with his talent as an artist. A man of few words who keeps his past and his thoughts to himself, he believes and adopts appropriately the pithy saying, “Adapt or die.”
He finally winds up in a special concentration camp with good food, warm clothing, soft mattresses and occasional music where he is offered preferential treatment in exchange for counterfeiting the American Dollar and the challenging British Pound so that the Nazis can invade their enemies financially from the inside. Operation Bernhard. The Nazis had not just a vision but many meticulous plans alright.
These prisoners are not any more cheerful than the “ordinary” prisoners on the other side of the wall. In fact, they feel guiltier. Why? On top of it, Sally befriends Adolf Burger, a man who lost his family in a different concentration camp, a man who has nothing else to lose. While Sally is burdened with trying to protect his fellow inmates and himself, Burger is driven by a vision to sacrifice all their lives for the rest of the world. Die Fälscher pushes us to debate guilt and the mathematics of appraising lives.
Is placing yourself above the rest of the world a crime? Are selfish or self-centered people, which includes every one of us, to be eternally burdened with guilt? How do you sacrifice a hundred lives hoping that it would save a million others, when there is no certainty? Do you? Could you write an equation or inequation involving you and your kith and kin? Which is the tipping point? What about the macro level? Could the killing of the terrorists and the collateral in the “War Against Terrorism” be justified in this manner, weighing their total against the total number of lives they may have killed in the future?
The number of questions the movie triggers in your mind are many, and if you can form opinions about them, however ill-formed they may be, bingo! you have learnt a lot about yourself.
Credit goes to Adolf Burger who was able to bring Sally to life from his nightmarish memories although most of the other characters were a combination of figments of fact and fiction. He himself is a fascinating character.
Read director Stefan Ruzowitzky’s interview with Greencine: Sometimes Right, Sometimes Wrong.
Image Source: Wikipedia
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